Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for reelection, is under the microscope as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is expected to attempt to move to dismiss or table the two impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday.
Once senators are sworn in as jurors Wednesday, the 51-member Democratic majority, which includes three independents who caucus with them, could dismiss or delay the trial if all Democrats can remain united. It remains unclear if Democrats will be united on motions to dismiss due to the fact that if there’s one Democratic defection, they would need at least one Republican vote to end the trial.
The Montana Democrat is in the midst of one of the most competitive Senate election matchups this cycle and is expected to face former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy. The race is one of four “toss-ups,” according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
Tester is under a significant amount of pressure and has not said if he plans to support a motion to dismiss, only telling reporters Monday that he still needed to read the articles. However, Senate Republicans, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and outside groups are already putting into motion plans to make the coming days and months as politically painful as possible for the Montana Democrat.
Senate Republican colleagues are already turning up the heat on Tester. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) claimed Tester “turned and ran” and was “nowhere to be found” when the impeachment managers arrived in the Senate chamber on Tuesday.
“If you look at the Democrat side, virtually every Democrat was there, but Jon Tester was nowhere to be found because apparently it was too frightening to hear the managers simply read the facts,” Cruz said.
Tester’s office disputed Cruz’s characterization.
“Sen. Tester was present in the chamber and is reviewing the articles of impeachment against Secretary Mayorkas,” Eli Cousins, a spokesman for the Montana Democrat, said in response to an inquiry from the Washington Examiner.
At a press conference a week prior, Cruz claimed that Schumer would attempt to end the trial quickly in an effort to protect vulnerable Senate Democrats up for reelection this cycle.
“How many of you have asked Jon Tester in Montana, why are you refusing to comply with your constitutional duty? How many of you have asked Sherrod Brown or Jacky Rosen or Tammy Baldwin, they’re all on the ballot,” Cruz told reporters last week. “That’s who Chuck Schumer is trying to protect from having to hear the evidence and fulfill a constitutional responsibility.”
On the other side, Schumer is advocating to table the impeachment trial “for the sake of the Senate’s integrity.”
“The charges brought against Secretary Mayorkas fail to meet the high standard of high crimes and misdemeanors,” Schumer said during a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday. “To validate this gross abuse by the House would be a grave mistake and could set a dangerous precedent for the future.”
The ad war for Tester is also just beginning. OneNation, an outside group affiliated with Senate GOP leadership, began airing a $15.2 million ad buy at the beginning of the month spotlighting Tester’s previous votes and statements about immigration, the border wall, and sanctuary cities.
“After Tester voted to let President Biden stop building Trump’s wall and voted repeatedly to fund sanctuary cities, tell Sen. Tester to stop supporting Biden’s border disaster,” a narrator says in the ad.
In a memo from the NRSC to its Senate candidates, obtained by the Washington Examiner, the committee advocated Republicans to “hold Senate Democrats’ feet to the fire for their refusal to demand accountability for the invasion of the southern border.”
“Democrats caused this crisis, and voting to acquit Mayorkas is a vote to allow the continued invasion of our country,” the memo reads.
Tester’s Republican opponent is following the committee’s guidance, blasting the Montana senator on social media constantly for his record on immigration and projecting how he may vote in Mayorkas’s impeachment trial.
“@JonTester can’t hide from his absolutely abysmal record of letting illegals raid America and opening our border to deadly drugs, criminals, and terrorists,” Sheehy wrote Tuesday in a post on X.
Tester’s campaign is firing back, releasing ads to distance the Montana Democrat from President Joe Biden on immigration policy.
“Jon Tester worked with Republicans, fighting to shut down the border, target fentanyl traffickers, and add hundreds of new border patrol agents,” a narrator in the ad said. “He fought to stop President Biden from letting migrants stay in America, instead of remain in Mexico.”
Last week, Tester directed some of the harshest criticism of any Senate Democrat at Mayorkas when the Homeland Security Secretary appeared before a key Senate committee.
“All you have to see is what’s gone on at the southern border, and you know that we’re in a situation that needs immediate repair, immediate fixing, immediate overhaul,” Tester said to Mayorkas during the hearing.
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“The fact is the border needs to be fixed, and we need to step up as Congress, the administration needs to step up, you need to step up,” Tester added during the heated exchange.
National Republicans view Montana as a top pickup opportunity for them this cycle. Former President Donald Trump carried the state by 16 percentage points in 2020, and Republicans recently gained a supermajority in the state legislature. There are 34 Senate seats up for grabs in the 2024 election cycle. Of those, Democrats must defend 23, compared to just 11 for Republicans, and nearly all competitive seats are held by Democrats.
